You win, Gucci. After 18 months of high-drag keening and whining about the ridiculous tendency of the house to slap a random tiger on things…

We are forced to admit – VERY BEGRUDGINGLY AND WITH QUALIFICATIONS OUT THE WAZOO – that we actually… don’t… hate… this…tiger dress.

Okay, fine, you bitches. We like it.

The dress as a whole, we mean. On this particular person. The tiger itself we still hate. It’s just that for once, a Gucci tiger is failing to ruin the dress it’s been slapped on.

What matters to us here are two things – and kittens? If you care, write this down, because it’s two big cornerstones of chicness and good style: restraint and suitability.

“Elegance is refusal,” Coco Chanel is supposed to have said. Whether she did or not, it’s largely accurate sentiment. Chic elegance comes from knowing just when to stop. It’s a principle embodied in another Coco maxim, the one about taking one item off before you leave the house. Even for a woman who liked to pile on strand upon strand of pearls, quilt a bag, add a chain to it and pair it with a brightly colored boucle suit with contrasting-trim lapels, she still knew that there was a point where editing needed to take center stage in order to complete a chic look.

Our point here is that it’s just one tiger, centrally placed, framed by some lace trim, placed on a dress with only two very easy-to-wear and gently pleasing colors to it. The pleating and tiers give it shape and interest, but nothing here (except the tiger itself) feels over-the-top or overdone. By scaling back on the design elements and colors, it’s automatically much closer to elegant than a whole lot of other “forced whimsy”-style garments. In fact, we’re pretty sure we’ve never used the word “elegant” to describe any of the tiger-themed Gucci stuff. Although in the interests of full disclosure, the first time we saw one of these tiger dresses, we actually gushed over it. Had we known we’d be seeing two dozen more of them over the next 18 months, we wouldn’t have been so laudatory. And to be fair, John Legend managed to pull it off too, but then again … John Legend.

Anyway, there’s restraint in the design and that makes it more chic than other variations on this theme.

Second, this just plain suits her, top to bottom. She’s got the dewy ingenue looks to make Gucci’s “birthday party dress” aesthetic actually work and not come off cloying or inappropriate. The right dress on the right gal in the right setting. Check those off your list and you’ll pretty much nail it.